


Expectations

by lalejandra



Category: The OC (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-25
Updated: 2004-01-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 14:11:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16097243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Ryan knows that expecting anything at all is a mistake.





	Expectations

Ryan knew it was a mistake to become so complacent. You start believing the things people say to you and thinking you can trust them, and, of course, they let you down. Ryan just can't believe that he wasn't more prepared for this. After all, he wasn't a total moron. He knew that Marissa was more like his mother than he wanted to admit, and he knew that Seth wanted to be cool more than anything in the world, and he knew that some people wouldn't stop until they had what they wanted -- and even once they had what they wanted, they still didn't stop.

To put it more simply: Oliver wouldn't stop.

Ryan had met guys like him before. They had to have the fastest car, the girlfriend with the biggest tits. They had to prove they had the biggest cojones -- and someone was always hurt in their showing off. Sometimes people died. Sometimes people were arrested. Sometimes everyone's lives were changed.

Oliver had no clue what he was doing, playing with Ryan's life. Ryan had no idea what he was doing either, but his life was his own to fuck up or make better as he figured it out. Oliver shouldn't be allowed to manipulate everyone -- and how could they not tell? Ryan thought a lot of things about Seth Cohen, but never that Seth could be so blind and stupid.

But Ryan should have known better. He should have. Because Seth was blind and stupid about Summer, blind and stupid about Anna -- even blind and stupid about Marissa. Ryan had been blind and stupid too. Still was. About Marissa especially. Everything she said, Ryan wanted to believe, because she believed it.

She believed it all. She believed Oliver instead of believing Ryan. That stung. It even hurt a little. The bigger problem, though, was that Ryan thought he could trust her with his life, his thoughts -- and he clearly couldn't. He couldn't trust her at all. And he couldn't trust Seth either.

It seemed, ironically, that the only person he could trust was Luke. And who knew Luke was so well-read? That was unexpected. But Ryan should have expected it, because it was always the dumb jock who turned out to have hidden depths. Ryan should have seen this all coming, because it was always the loner bad boy who fell for the rich girl, and the rich girl always, always, always turned on him.

Never had he seen the loner bad boy fall for the rich dorky boy, so maybe that was why he wasn't surprised when he kind of fell for Seth. It made sense in his head -- Ryan was different than everyone, so why shouldn't he go against type? But he knew Seth wasn't into it, because Seth wanted Summer, and he wanted Ryan as a friend and ally more than he wanted Ryan as a lover -- and Ryan wasn't sure he could be Seth's lover, and, anyway, Ryan had wanted Marissa more, and there was his mistake. Because he'd wanted Marissa so he could protect her and save her and thinking you could ever help someone else change their life was always a mistake. Look at Sandy -- he'd done it, and it had been the biggest mistake he'd ever made.

There were other mistakes too, mistakes Ryan knew he made -- mistakes with Sandy and Kirsten, mistakes with Theresa, mistakes with Summer. At least this had happened sooner rather than later, six months in instead of a year or two. Sure, he was feeling settled -- but that was another mistake. Every time you have a routine, when you're predictable -- that's when your legs are cut out from under you, your tires are slashed, your girlfriend cut, your brother put in jail, your mother gone.

When you become complacent, that's when your best friend from childhood decides she doesn't want to be your beard anymore, doesn't want to be the cover for you and her brother -- she wants to really be your lover. When you become complacent, and you start to trust that people are who they think they are, that's when they turn on you. Ryan knows it. He knows it because he's not stupid; he's got street smarts and he has a good sense about people, like a sixth sense, what Seth would call a "spidey sense" -- like the kind of sense that helps you find your girlfriend when she's OD'd in an alleyway; the kind of sense that gets you out of the fight before the cops come, the kind of sense that tells you it's a bad idea to go with your brother to jack a car. The kind of sense that sometimes you have to ignore because another sense is urging you to go, to do it, to change your life irrevocably.

Ryan knows that people aren't who they think they are, and he hates it, because he wants to be who he thinks he is -- the kind of guy with a spider sense, the kind of guy who saves people who are in trouble. A superhero, like from Seth's comic books; someone who doesn't need to wear a lame cape to be able to convince his friends that Oliver is bad news.

They won't listen, though, and Ryan thinks that maybe if he wore a cape and tights, maybe then they'd pay attention. But they won't -- they wouldn't -- because they want to believe, too, that people are who they think they are. And that's where they go wrong, where they're naïve -- because people are who they are, and they don't change, and expecting anything, anything at all -- it's always a mistake.

  



End file.
